John Brooke Quotes

Mr. Brooke was a grave, silent young man, with handsome brown eyes and a pleasant voice. Meg liked his quiet manners and considered him a walking encyclopedia of useful knowledge.

“Don’t be dismal or fret, but do your duty and you’ll get your reward, as good Mr. Brooke has, by being respected and loved.”

He was perfectly open and honorable about Meg, for he told us he loved her, but would earn a comfortable home before he asked her to marry him.

Away ran Jo, and Mrs. March gently told Meg Mr. Brooke’s real feelings. “Now, dear, what are your own? Do you love him enough to wait till he can make a home for you, or will you keep yourself quite free for the present?”

She never alluded to a certain person, but she thought of him a good deal, dreamed dreams more than ever, and once Jo, rummaging her sister’s desk for stamps, found a bit of paper scribbled over with the words, ‘Mrs. John Brooke’, whereat she groaned tragically and cast it into the fire, feeling that Laurie’s prank had hastened the evil day for her.

“I hate estimable young men with brown eyes!”

“I couldn’t do better if I waited half my life! John is good and wise, he’s got heaps of talent, he’s willing to work and sure to get on, he’s so energetic and brave.”

Meg and John begin humbly, but I have a feeling that there will be quite as much happiness in the little house as in the big one.

“You’ve got a treasure, young man, see that you deserve it.”

Like most other young matrons, Meg began her married life with the determination to be a model housekeeper. John should find home a paradise, he should always see a smiling face, should fare sumptuously every day, and never know the loss of a button.

Meg learned to love her husband better for his poverty, because it seemed to have made a man of him, given him the strength and courage to fight his own way, and taught him a tender patience with which to bear and comfort the natural longings and failures of those he loved.

The boy early developed a mechanical genius which delighted his father and distracted his mother, for he tried to imitate every machine he saw, and kept the nursery in a chaotic condition, with his ‘sewinsheen’, a mysterious structure of string, chairs, clothespins, and spools, for wheels to go ‘wound and wound’.

“I knew I should be satisfied, if I had a little home, and John, and some dear children like these. I’ve got them all, thank God, and am the happiest woman in the world,” and Meg laid her hand on her tall boy’s head, with a face full of tender and devout content.